{"id":53749,"date":"2014-05-20T14:28:20","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=53749"},"modified":"2014-05-21T15:28:40","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T21:28:40","slug":"life-on-the-academic-animal-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=53749","title":{"rendered":"“Life on the Academic Animal Farm”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the files of “it’s who they are. It’s what they do,” here’s another academic’s run-in with what I’ve come to call the most anti-intellectual of all public spaces, the contemporary academy.\u00a0 And this indictment includes, among other more<\/em> intellectual spaces, public restrooms, which have not as yet to my knowledge set up “free speech zones” or allowed for the organized harassment of Jews and conservatives. \u00a0 From Public Discourse, Robert Oscar Lopez:<\/a><\/p>\n

In the closing paragraphs of Orwell\u2019s classic<\/a>, the reader finds out that \u201cAfter that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters.\u201d The unforgettable closing lines of the book read:<\/p>\n

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because they are essentially boring and uncreative, they end up, so often, dehumanizing and demonizing people they can\u2019t converse with.<\/p>\n

The greatest, most insidious form of dehumanization is the refusal to let people speak. To impose silence, to take away language and expression from human beings, is to violate one of their most fundamental human rights. More importantly, it discounts their very personhood. This is precisely what mobs on college campuses do when they rally, petition, picket, and scream, preventing a scapegoated individual from speaking. Disturbingly, these tactics have become more and more common.<\/p>\n

Aayan Hirsi Ali<\/a>, for example, was too harsh for Muslim students at Brandeis. Those who protested her planned graduation speech seemed convinced that African women are great for diversity unless they didn\u2019t have a good experience with Islam. In that case, they ought not to let people know their stories exist.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Condoleezza Rice<\/a> worked for George W. Bush and didn\u2019t have the foresight to turn down a job as the National Security Advisor or Secretary of State. That she didn\u2019t have the magical ability to stop war, enhanced interrogation, or Bush\u2019s mispronunciation of the word \u201cnuclear\u201d is infuriating. Didn\u2019t she know that one day such crimes against humanity might cost her a trip to New Brunswick, New Jersey? Isn\u2019t it every statesman\u2019s dream to speak to the hung-over graduates of the country\u2019s \u201c14th biggest party school<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

Just to keep up with Massachusetts and New Jersey, protestors at Pasadena City College forced Dr. Eric Walsh<\/a>, the city\u2019s public health director, to back out of delivering the commencement speech. He is, after all, a Seventh-Day Adventist and said something negative about homosexuality at some point. Or something.<\/p>\n

Are you lost yet? Overwhelmed? There\u2019s more.<\/p>\n

Occupation and Rationalization<\/b><\/p>\n

Robert J. Birgenau<\/a> was the chancellor at UC Berkeley when Occupy Wall Street came to his campus. Haverford College, outside of Philadelphia, made the grave faux pas<\/i> of inviting him to be their commencement speaker. The Inquirer <\/i>reports:<\/p>\n

Haverford President Daniel H. Weiss announced on Tuesday morning that Birgeneau has declined the college\u2019s invitation to speak and receive an honorary degree. Birgeneau is known for his support of undocumented and minority students, but became controversial when students, as part of the Occupy movement, held non-violent protests and were subject to force by university police.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not clear, exactly, why \u201coccupying\u201d other people\u2019s spaces by setting up tents and busing in thugs to block sidewalks and scream at people is considered \u201cnon-violent.\u201d One might pose this query to the petitioners at Smith College, who intimidated International Monetary Fund manager Christine Lagarde based on her non-military use of global finances to oppress people in poor countries. As the New York Times<\/i><\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

For years, critics of the I.M.F. have charged that in providing economic aid to poor nations, it has imposed conditions that favor Western nations and businesses, and propped up oppressive governments. \u201cThe I.M.F. has been a primary culprit in the failed developmental policies implanted in some of the world\u2019s poorest countries,\u201d said an online petition<\/a> against Ms. Lagarde\u2019s appearance at Smith, a women\u2019s college. \u201cThis has led directly to the strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

So let\u2019s get this straight: It\u2019s fine to set up a tent city on campus and demand that the government write off hundreds of thousands of student loans. Even if this is literally called \u201coccupation,\u201d it\u2019s good. What\u2019s bad is asking those people to leave and pay their bills instead of expecting tax-paying laborers across the country to pay back their loans for them. Setting up a world bank offering loans to poor countries? That\u2019s bad too.<\/p>\n

One can find a splendid range of rationalizations from academics who justify such censorship. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, <\/i>sanctimony abounds. They\u2019re sanguine, even delighted, to see speakers barred from campus events. Here is a gem from the comment section of Jackson Lears\u2019s column, \u201cRutgers U. Should Not Honor Condoleezza Rice<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Prof. Lears objects to honoring<\/i> Rice by giving her a prestigious forum and granting her an honorary degree; my guess is that he’d be perfectly happy to have her speak at a university sponsored colloquium where the traditional academic practice of give-and-take discussion and debate could allow for a more thorough and nuanced consideration of the issues.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This defense, though common, is nonsense. First of all, just as much controversy and censorship happen at lower-stakes speaking engagements. As an easy reference point, take yours truly. I won\u2019t go down the long, long list of thwarted attempts I made to engage \u201cacross the aisle\u201d on my state university campus, but this essay<\/a> should give the reader a taste of what happens when someone challenges campus orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

You get the wacko protestors harassing presenters, online petitions, grandstanding at department meetings, and no nuanced consideration of anything you say. If you\u2019ve become such a public scandal that pro bono<\/i> lawyers admire your heroism and pitch in to help, you may survive the tenure-review process. If nobody off campus knows about it, the censors will exploit your obscurity and self-imposed silence. You\u2019ll be getting a \u201cno\u201d at tenure-review time and will be dumped on the job market as just another desperate academic looking for work.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

On April 5, 2014, there was a conference scheduled by Stanford University\u2019s Anscombe Society<\/a>. Ryan Anderson, Kellie Fiedorek, and I were invited to speak at the event. This is precisely what the apologists for commencement censorship claim exists as an alternative: bring in opposing voices at events designed for debate instead of ruining kids\u2019 graduation day with politics. Right?<\/p>\n

Wrong. The Orwellian academy would not let us sing. According to \u201cqueer\u201d students (who apparently have little understanding of the originally defiant and transgressive implications of \u201cqueerness\u201d), Ryan, Kellie, and I would cause delicate and unstable homosexual students to kill themselves<\/a>. This, in spite of the fact that Ryan has spoken to Stanford\u2019s law school in the past without incident, and I am a flaming queer who writes dirty novels about gay sex.<\/p>\n

But these students were eager to demonize me, the Afro-Caribbean Sino-Malayan queer Army veteran raised by a divorced lesbian in blue-collar Buffalo, who survived homelessness and cancer, then climbed out of a world of crime and abjection to become a world-traveled polyglot delivering speeches about children\u2019s rights to hundreds of thousands of people in Paris. When do I get to be that inspiring story of overcoming adversity?<\/p>\n

Thanks to the courage of Stanford’s Anscombe Society President Judy Romea and the assistance of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Stanford event was not derailed. One thing that differentiates the Stanford event is the fact that Kellie, Ryan, and I chose not to leave the pigpen undisturbed. All three of us “faced the music” and went to Palo Alto to present, even in the face of student protests and hostility. The experience leads me to conclude that the wrong choice is simply to avoid the groups that attempt to censor opposition. The speakers who have been targeted bear as much duty to defy resistance and speak, as the academic community bears to engage in the activity that Arendt believes makes human beings unique: listening and “thinking.”<\/p>\n

I would explain the ins and outs of Stanford\u2019s controversy, including why certain passages of the university code were cited first by the censors, then by the anti-censors, but Public Discourse <\/i>does have word limits, and life is short. As we see in all these censorship campaigns, the details are long and convoluted, and they grow more so, as the grunting pigs cite bureaucratic rules, safety regulations, student committee bylaws, funding provisos, and mission statements, to claim that they\u2019re legally justified in dehumanizing other people and preventing them from speaking. Bureaucratic sadism thrives among those afflicted with intellectual cowardice.<\/p>\n

While conservatives can certainly be priggish and uptight, it is largely liberals who populate the plush pigsties of Orwell\u2019s Animal Farm<\/i> these days. The left has become so comfortable that they think this\u2014this distasteful caballing and snickering and demonizing\u2014is the way things ought to be. And unfortunately, they have the power to shape campus culture.<\/p>\n

I hope they like the pigpens of their own making.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last turns out not to be merely an eliptical, however.\u00a0 Because word is, they don’t really like it at all. \u00a0 In fact, it has them “fuming.”\u00a0<\/a> Which is ironic, because they trained the very cadre of (TRIGGER ALERT) self-righteous, ubiquitously potential victims now tormenting them to do just that — and it urns out those intellectual chickennnnnnnnnnnnsssss.<\/em>..are coming home to roost<\/em>!<\/p>\n

The problem with selling your soul to be eaten last is that, well, eventually all the hors d’oeuvre<\/em>s run out and you’re what’s for dinner.\u00a0 To borrow from Kris Kristofferson, I hope the going up was worth the coming down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the files of “it’s who they are. It’s what they do,” here’s another academic’s run-in with what I’ve come to call the most anti-intellectual of all public spaces, the contemporary academy.\u00a0 And this indictment includes, among other more intellectual spaces, public restrooms, which have not as yet to my knowledge set up “free speech zones” or allowed for the organized harassment of Jews and conservatives. \u00a0 From Public Discourse,<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":9196393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9196393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53749"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53776,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53749\/revisions\/53776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}